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Comment by cnity | Hacker News Reader

+1 on game development. This is where I always find the most engaging and fun programming puzzles.

Yep.

Key thing is to make small game projects that you aim to finish in well under a year. Once you embark on a big project and feature creep sets in, you’re back to avoiding programming.

Totally. I find that seeking a true MVP (like, really paring the idea down to truly minimal) is part of the fun. Making something really tiny that explores an idea is really inspiring and sets you up (mentally) for taking on something slightly larger next time.

What libraries or engine do you recommend to build on for fun of programming?

Unreal engine is pretty fun, I like the ease of adding models and physics by mouse without writing complex collision detection logics.

If you're _totally_ new to game programming (like me), I found tic80 [0] or pico8 [1] (I think the latter is more popular) a really nice introduction to game programming. They are simulated "fantasy consoles" that come with a whole wack constraints, so you're somewhat limited in what you can build, but it leaves a lot of room to grok core concepts that you could then take over to Unity or Unreal or the like.

There is a third one too, I can't remember what it's called though. I think it has "Love" in the name.

[0] https://tic80.com/

[1] https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

It is literally called Love (or LÖVE): https://love2d.org/

Ah, thanks! I thought so—I searched for "love console" and did not come up. "Love game engine" worked a little better.

I found Godot[1] to be a nice, mostly consistent and cohesive gaming engine and editor. It has a Python-like native scripting language, and the whole thing feels much more approachable compared to Unreal and Unity.

1. https://godotengine.org/

I've had some success banging out quick ideas with Godot

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